Science

November 30, 2009

Thanks to all of you for your kind patience during an unplanned period of inactivity on CB. Your interest and support are never forgotten and always appreciated!

While I was away I had the good fortune of being hired by the excellent community college here in Lake County to teach an introductory course in anthropology, the subject of my graduate work many years ago. I've wanted to return to the classroom and teach for some time, but until recently career commitments made this impossible.

I submitted my application more than a year-and-a-half ago, so you can imagine my surprise when I received a late afternoon phone call after such a long silence asking if I was still interested. I'm excited about the class, which will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays from January 19 through May 13, and delighted about the flexibility the College of Social Science is giving me to select and arrange material. Anthropological perspectives can be applied to virtually any subject.

Of course, I'll need to cover the basics of the four standard disciplines of cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology, but I want my students to contribute content as well. Perhaps, after learning about the broad range of topics that anthropologists study, more than a few will want to investigate -- albeit briefly -- relationships of astronomy and culture, or the extraterrestrial life debate and culture. An early objective in teaching this class will simply be to let students know the possibilities of anthropological inquiry.

Connections between culture and astronomy offer rich ground for study, well beyond the traditional area of archaeoastronomy, a field which explores how early people understood and used their knowledge of the sky in cultural contexts. As interesting as archaeoastronomy is -- it's methodology can shed light on ancient myths, world views, calendars, political structures, art and architecture -- related subjects deserve attention, too. Examples include astronomical material culture and social change (the telescope comes to mind); contributions of astronomy to modern Western cosmology; cultural impacts of discovering life beyond Earth; and even anthropological perspectives on astronomy as a scientific practice and system of knowledge.

I'm looking forward to the experience and the ideas my students will unquestionably generate.

Meanwhile, for those already interested in exploring the intersects of astronomy and culture, the following links might prove helpful:

January 04, 2009

Among the files I have for a writing project of mine is one about 1/2" thick and labeled SETI Permanent Study Group. Many people have heard of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), but fewer are aware that the preeminent scientific organization focused on the quest for verifiable evidence of technological civilizations beyond Earth -- the SETI Institute -- is based in the U.S., and that SETI involves so much more than scanning the microwave spectrum for messages. Like anything else, funding dictates what, when, and how much can be done. Fotunately for those who value this kind of investigation, the SETI Institute is positioned to do a lot.

SETI research also takes place at other locations around the world. There are established programs at UC Berkeley, Harvard, the University of Western Sydney in Australia, and the Institute of Radio Astronomy in Italy. Nor is participating in the search restricted to members of the academic community. SETI@home, an initiative sponsored by UC Berkeley's SERENDIP Program, utilizes thousands of personal computers like yours and mine to help analyze radio telescope data from the Aricebo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Anyone interested in assisting the project and who agrees to its policies can download a free program (available in either CPU or NVIDIA graphics board versions) and then, well, who knows? . . .

Now, about that file. The SETI Permanent Study Group is part of something called the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), an organization comprised primarily of academicians committed to expanding the frontiers of space. The study group was established in 2000 to replace the long-standing IAA SETI Committee. For nearly 40 years now, the group has held annual meetings, and much to the interest of people like me, the meeting agendas since 1999 plus abstracts of most papers are available online. Each year presents a fascinating snapshot of topics occupying the attention of leading SETI researchers. I especially enjoy seeing what's being presented from year to year in the group's second paper session, titled "SETI II: Interdisciplnary Aspects," probably because looking for interdisciplinary perspectives has long been part of my ongoing education.

Another aspect of SETI, and the one I specifically wanted to mention today, concerns the protocol which has been developed in the event that researchers one day find a verifiable signal or message from a technological civilization far away. The "Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence" was endorsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by the IAA, the International Institute of Space Law, the International Astronomical Union, and several other organizations.

One of the architects of the Declaration was Michael A. G. Michaud, a former Director of the U.S. State Department's Office of Advanced Technology and an authority on international science and technology agreements. Michaud also happens to be one of a handful of individuals on the planet who has published extensively on the implications of contact with civilizations beyond Earth, including one of the first articles, which appeared in 1974. His most recent contribution, Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials (Copernicus Books, 466 pp., 2007), is the most insightful and detailed presentation of the subject yet written. Here's what Michaud has to say about the prospect of contact, and about the Declaration itself:

"Many people dismiss -- even ridicule -- the idea of preparing for contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. Despite the giggle factor, a small but active invisible college has been making modest efforts to prepare.

As these issues are unlikely to engage the sustained attention of governments in advance of contact, the task has been left to nongovernmental organizations and individuals. . . .This Declaration, more commonly known as the First SETI Protocol, is an informal agreement among searchers, not among governments. Adherence is entirely voluntary; there are no enforcement provisions. The document enunciates three basic principles: verify the nature of any detection in coopertaion with other searchers; after verification, publically announce the discovery; do not send communications to the detected alien intellignce until international consultations have taken place. Other provisions spell out scientific procedures such as recording the evidence and protecting the appropriate wavelengths. Most SETI researchers have adhered to these principles."

Most, but apparently not all.

There are at least two other shortcomings associated with the Declaration that SETI researchers themselves acknowledge: first, the protocol currently does not take into account other contact scenarios, such as finding a verifiable extraterrestrial artifact in our solar system or confirming a visitation by extraterrestrials somewhere on Earth; and second, the protocol presumes an orderly routing and flow of information surrounding what would arguably be the most important scientific discovery in human history.

Seth Shostak, the SETI Institute's senior astronomer (and advisor to The Day the Earth Stood Still remake, mentioned a couple of posts ago), addresses that "orderly flow" assumption this way:

"Because verifying a signal is slow and the media are fast, there will be days of uncertainty for any newly detected candidate signal. . . .In the end, of course, and like all good science, a real detection will be confirmed by a wide range of observations, involving observers from many countries during the course of days or weeks. Facts are, the first discovery of a signal from an alien world will break into the world’s consciousness in a haphazard, messy fashion. The news won’t be crisp and well-defined. But it will be very, very exciting."

I'd say that's a pretty safe bet if and when it happens.

The reality of that new consciousness will be challenging to process, too. I'm looking forward to exploring here some of the cultural and spiritual implications of discovering life beyond Earth, no matter how the discovery is made. Today there are essentially three complementary but distinct methods of searching for evidence of life elsewhere: SETI, searches for extrasolar habitable planets, and investigations attached to government-sponsored space missions. Another SETI Institute scientist, Margaret Race, suggests the meaning and implications of a discovery made through each of these methods are different. She may be right about that, but it's likely the spiritual imapcts will be profound regardless of the relative simplicity or complexity of the life discovered.

Meanwhile, it's worth mentioning that Michaud, other pioneering SETI researchers, and virtually the entire current cadre of senior-level SETI scientists, including Shostak and Race, are IAA members. Many are also part of the SETI Permanent Study Group and attend the annual symposium.

I just had to smile the other day when I noticed Michaud's name listed under the "Lost Contact" section of IAA's member database.

December 13, 2008

Like most subjects associated with formal inquiry, cosmology can be broadly or narrowly defined. The second edition of The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as "the science or theory of the universe as an ordered whole, and the general laws which govern it." The OED also includes historical uses of the term. The earliest cited reference, from 1656, refers to "a speaking of the world." In the mid-18th Century, cosmology referred to "the science of the world in general" and "a philosophical or physiological Discourse of the World, or Universe in general." By the third quarter of the 19th Century, it was identified as a branch of metaphysics concerning the world and all phenomena in space and time. This is OED-accurate, to be sure, but it's not the entire story by a long shot.

One of the key references on my bookshelf is the Encyclopedia of Cosmology: Historical, Philosophical, and Scientific Foundations of Modern Cosmology, edited by Norriss Hetherington. I learned about it several years ago during my first read of Michael Crowe's The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900 (see the More Good Reads post and the sidebar). What I like most about the work is its far-ranging content, which includes schaolarly yet very readable entries on Chinese, Egyptian, Islamic, Megalithic, Mesopotamian, and Native American cosmologies, as well as on religion and cosmology, the plurality of worlds, and much more.

The Encyclopedia's publisher, editor, and the advisory board intentionally took an expansive view of the topic, which is described in the preface this way:

"A look at the cosmologies of other cultures can help us recognize that certain elements of our own cosmology which might otherwise escape our notice and pass as inevitable developments consist, instead, of arbitrary choices and values."

and

"If we understand philosophy to be a search for understanding more through thought than observation, and comprising human values as well as logic, religion might well be encompassed within this intellectual realm . . . Recent cosmology may not offer religious believers easy arguments in support of their faith. Indeed, the new cosmology poses challenges with which religious people must come to grips. At the same time, religious beliefs and values of individuals inevitably have entered into our modern cosmology, since it is created by thinking human beings.

With this, we have come full circle. After remarking on strange elements in ancient alien cosmologies and noticing apparent abberations in the early history of our own cosmology prior to the triumphant appearance of Western scientific cosmology, we can now begin to analyze our own cosmology more as a cultural artifact than as an inevtiable development in which every detail is strictly dictated by indisputable empirical fact. Nor are we forbidden to return our attention to earlier cosmologies with an increased sensitivity."

Cosmology as a "cultural artifact" appeals to the archaeologist in me.

So does the idea of suspending the assumption that scientifically-based 21st Century cosmology represents an "inevitable development" far removed, disconnected, or especially superior to its past. Meaning, somehow distant from the rich intellectual and spiritual traditions that preceeded it. Instead I prefer searching for and exploring connections with these traditions because I believe the process leads to deeper understandings of, and appreciations for, what we think we know today.

I'm not alone in this view, of course. I have plenty of anonymous as well as some distinguished company.

CB readers will already recognize the name Steven Dick, the Chief Historian at NASA and an important contributor to our Western historical understanding of the extraterrestrial life debate. In Life on Other Worlds, Dick has this to say about the debate as it concerns religion and cosmology:

"In claiming that the debate has moved from the great generalizations of physical cosmology, to the exploration of philosophical implications, to more empirical investigations, we must constantly keep in mind that the philosophical is never banished completely and that the cosmological is always present in the background. This is equivalent to stating what is widely accepted: that the subject of extraterrestrial life has become more amenable to the methods of modern science -- observation, theory, and experimentation -- while still being enmeshed in philosophical assumptions that all of science seems unable to completely escape. Indeed, the extraterrestrial life itself may be seen as a struggle for a worldview, with all the problems that is implies."

I can't help but like this. The perspective complements CB so well that I smile when I read it.

Maybe it's true that I'm attracted to large struggles with difficult problems. But there's also something at work here beyond challenge and complexity: I really enjoy exploring the subjects I'm attracted to -- even more so since I launched CB last October.

I wrote back then there's no shortage of Big Questions and Cosmology Bus is one way of touring the landscape in search of answers.

So let's define cosmology as broadly as possible and expect to make many stops, some predictable, some out-of-the-way, and a few that aren't even on the map.

December 06, 2008

On a recent trip to Search Magazine I stumbled across a news item I completely missed earlier this year. "God's Dice on the Auction Block," by associate editor Sam Kean, presents a translation and an analysis of a letter Albert Eistein wrote to a friend in January 1954. The 472-word letter, to a philosopher named Eric Gutkind, then at Yeshiva University in New York, was auctioned in London last May. The successful buyer paid $404,000 for it.

That works out to roughly $856 per word, which is impressive enough, but even more so when I learned that in 1996, Christie's in New York sold a collection of 53 love letters Einstein wrote to his first wife, Mileva Maric, for $442,500 -- about $8,300 per letter. Obviously the Gutkin item contained something pretty special.

I wasn't disappointed.

As it turns out, Einstein wrote Gutkind about God, the Bible, religion in general and Judaism in particular. Given the importance of Einstein to 20th Century theoretical physics and cosmology, not to mention 20th Century global culture, his views, well, matter. No pun intended.

If you're inclined, you can read the letter via the link above but, meanwhile, what struck me is how direct and critical Einstein is about the topics he mentions. Previously, my general impression of where Einstein stood on religion was based on a famous statment of his that appeared in an article titled "Science and Religion," which appeared in Nature in 1940: "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." I also knew he rejected the concept of a personal God and considered himself an agnostic. The Gutkind letter is straightforward and revealing. In it you'll find this statement:

"The word of God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of the human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can change this . . . For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition."

Did I mention I wasn't disappointed?

I'm not, because as Kean correctly points out, in the letter Einstein chides religion but never condemns belief itself. He also does his readers a helpful service by quoting this passage from a speech Einstein gave just after the article in Nature was published: "I must nevertheless qualify this assertion . . . with reference to the actual content of historical religions."

Unfortunately, Kean doesn't provide the source of the speech. Doing a little digging of my own (as a former archaeologist I'm pretty good at this) I discovered the speech was made on September 10, 1941, at the Symposium on Science, Philosophy and Religion, which was held at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. The day after he gave his talk the Associated Press printed a story about it titled "Sees No Personal God." I pinned this all down in Walter Isaacson's NYT bestselling biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe, published by Simon & Schuster in 2007. I'm reading it now.

Fortunately, the full address is available online, but postings I've seen inaccurately refer to a "conference" and give the year as 1941.

There are two successive paragraphs from the speech I want to quote here. They offer the full context of Einstein's reference to "historical religions," and amplify his take on the relationship of science and religion. The latter inlcudes that well-known statement mentioned above:

"Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Though I have asserted above that in truth a legitimate conflict between religion and science cannot exist I must nevertheless qualify this assertion once again on an essential point, with reference to the actual content of historical religions. This qualification has to do with the concept of God. During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favor by means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old conception of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfilment of their wishes."

The entire speech is well worth reading, too.

Einstein's personal opinions on God, science, and religion, whether published in Nature, shared at a symposium, or included in a personal letter to a friend, will always remain opinions. But they are carefully considered ones, to be sure, and as such they deserve thoughtful consideration whether we accept them or not.

Personally, I'm encouraged by the fact that in his letter to Gutkind, Einstein did not reject the positive role religion can provide in the lives of human beings, alter his agnosticism, or contradict his earlier assertion about the synergy between science and religion that ensures progress for both.

November 11, 2008

Joseph Sheppherd, a friend of mine, is an anthropologist who works in the Pacific Northwest. He’s also a gifted storyteller and writer, and among the books he’s written is one called A Wayfarer's Guide to Bringing the Sacred Home, which I had the privilege of helping to publish a few years ago.

A Wayfarer's Guide describes the spiritual connection we have with our inner being, with members of our family, and with the community where we live. It also explores how these fundamental relationships contribute (or not) to our own spiritual development. Sheppherd draws upon Baha'i scripture and other Baha'i writings to illustrate the idea that sacredness resides in all three areas. His premise is that over time, we learn to bring many things into our lives. Some good. Some bad. And that:

“For many of us this is the beginning of a lifelong process of personal transformation. We come to see things around us in a new light and seek the divine purpose in the world, and we begin to bring the sacredness home.”

Of course, many does not include all. There are at least as many reasons as there are individuals who aren’t at all interested in the divine, in religion, in spirituality, or in anything else that touches on beliefs that go beyond the power of self.

That said, this gem of a book also teaches a lot about perspective, a subject human beings encounter every day whether consciously or not. Early on Joseph uses the night sky as a way of introducing how different perspectives offer very different interpretations of what’s seen, but don’t alter the underlying reality of what stars are. It’s worth quoting in full:

“Our views of the world are as unique as we are. When we look up at the night sky, we all see stars, but our perceptions of what we see may be very different. Some of us perceive patterns and connect the points of light into constellations; others see the interstices, the dark spaces between the stars. Some see the stars in two dimensions, arrayed like electric lights of various sizes on the ceiling; others perceive a third dimension of depth in their varying magnitudes. To some the sun and the stars are different; to others they are the same thing, with the one simply being closer to us than the rest. When we represent stars graphically, some draw them scintillating with five, six, or more points; others just make them dots. Regardless of how we see or portray them, stars are what they are, and their reality does not change. Only our perceptions of them differ.”

Joseph states the same is true of our individual understandings of God, but that’s a subject for another post.

And other books.

Another interesting volume, one that addresses our relationship with the cosmos, is Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life, and the Theological Implications. Edited by Steven J. Dick, an historian of science at the U.S. Naval Observatory and author of several works on the extraterrestrial life debate, this volume includes perspectives on the topic from physicists, astrophysicists, biochemists, planetary scientists, philosophers, historians of science, and theologians trained in science.

Not surprisingly, there is a range of opinion expressed about how much concepts about God should be revised as our understanding of the universe evolves.

Joseph’s examples of how human beings perceive the bodies of plasma churning with fusion energythroughout the universe remind me that no matter what our opinions may be concerning the prospect of life beyond Earth, they do not alter its presence or absence. It either exists or it does not.

Meanwhile, in my lifetime, the night sky has already come to mean many things: a source of awe and spiritual connection; a subject deserving of investigation; a symbol of just how much there is to learn; a reminder of my own journey so far; and more.

November 07, 2008

Yesterday, after driving my morning route, I jumped in my car and traveled to downtown Chicago for the third and final noontime lecture on extraterrestrial life co-sponsored by the Adler Planetarium and the Chicago Temple. (I missed the second one, on what extremophilesare teaching astronomers about the possibility of life beyond Earth. BTW, links to both institutions appear in my post of October 25.)

Once again, the lecture was a real treat.

Dr. Grace Wolf-Chase, an Adler astronomer and senior research associate at the University of Chicago, spoke on “Searching for Life in an Evolving Universe.” Wolf-Chase studies the early stages of star formation and the effects of outflows from newly formed stars. Her presentation touched on these subjects, but most of her talk focused on how astronomy has become one of the most diverse multi-disciplinary fields in science today, using a wide range of sophisticated technologies to expandour understanding of how planets form around stars and how this process might yield habitable worlds.

Today the search for exoplanets is one of the most energetic specialties of astronomy. The first exoplanet, a largeJupiter-class body found orbiting a Sun-like star called 51 Pegasi, was discovered in 1995. As of this evening, 322 exoplanets have been identified using a variety of techniques. That’s 322 and counting.

For those interested in knowing the real time running total, Wolf-Chase referred her audience to The Exoplanets Encyclopedia, which not only keeps track of the number, but also provides a wealth of information on all things exo-.

Another strong resource is NASA’s own Astrobiology Institute (NAI), formally established in 1997 but loosely organized a couple of years before then. It’s mission follows that of astrobiology itself:

“The mission of astrobiology is to study the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life on Earth and in the Universe.

Astrobiology shares with other space related science programs a broad range of research interests. Astrobiology encompasses the understanding of biology as a planetary phenomenon. This includes how planetary processes give rise to life, how they sustain or inhibit life, and how life can emerge as an important planetary process; how astrophysical processes give rise to planets elsewhere, what the actual distribution of planets is, and whether there are habitable planets outside of our solar system; a determination of whether life exists elsewhere and how to search for and identify it; what the ultimate environmental limits of life are, whether Earth’s biota represent only a subset of the full diversity of life, and the future of Earth’s biota in space.

The mission of the NASA Astrobiology Institute is to further our understanding of these profound questions by:

I’ve contributed to and written a few mission statements in my time. None as “far-reaching” as this one.

Something else Wolf-Chase accomplished was giving her audience a sense of the cosmic scale associated with the closest known exoplanet. Phoning home from it would require more than a 10-year wait before the message (“Wish you were here?”) is received. In contrast, a message phoned-in from the moon would take about one second. From Mars, 10 minutes.

Current investigations of known exoplanets primarily focus on detecting evidence of an atmosphere, oxygen, liquid water, and methane – and then ruling out alternate explanations for them if/when they’re detected.

The search is certainly no small task when one considers our sun is just one of more than 200 billion stars comprising the Milky Way galaxy. Putting this in even more dramatic perspective, the Milky Way is only one of perhaps 80-100 billion galaxies in the presently observable universe.

That’s a lot of real estate.

And given the large quantity of organic material in space – in particular, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (a term I never get tired of saying out loud) – I’m betting there are plenty of habitable zones on plenty of planets that human beings have yet to discover.

October 31, 2008

My last post mentioned the Webster Institute for the History of Astronomy at the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum. It’s a place I’m gradually getting to know because for the past few months I’ve been fortunate to volunteer a few hours a week there. It’s a fascinating part of the planetarium, not only because of its exceptional collections and library, but also because of the interesting people who work and do research there.

The Institute is located below ground level in a behind-the-scenes secure section of the building. Above ground, visitors walking to and from the CTA bus stop in front of the planetarium, or to and from the adjacent parking lot, pass directly over it, completely unaware of what’s hidden one story below.

My role as a volunteer has been to record information found on a large collection of star charts and associated photographs the planetarium acquired several years ago.

That’s the short version.

A more specific description would be cataloging data associated with the Carte du Ciel, by far the planet’s largest science project of the late-19th and early-20th Centuries. International in scope and involving as many as 20 observatories on four continents working steadily over many years, the goal of the Carte du Ciel(“Map of the Sky”) was no less than to use the still-new medium of photography to accurately record the relative positions of millions of stars for the first time in human history, and then publish the results as The Astrographic Catalogue.

Each participating observatory was assigned a zone representing a specific part of the sky. Each was responsible for making and publishing its photographs and charts.

It was a revolutionary project in many respects, but the sheer volume of labor required to make the images, measure and plot the positions of every star of at least the 11th magnitude(brightness), and print and publish the results caused the project to run decades longer than expected. Most of the observations were made between 1895 and 1920, but one observatory worked on the project until 1948. Another was involved until 1950.

In the end, The Astrographic Catalogue (AC) was completed but not published in full until 1958. Subsequent enhanced versionsappeared in the late 1990s.

An interesting part of Carte du Ciel history is the role women played in measuring the magnitude of stars captured in the photographs and charting their relative positions. In Europe and Australia, where the majority of participating observatories were located, women were routinely hired to do this early form of “computing,” an exacting and critically important task. (Readers wanting to learn more about women’s work in astronomy at the beginning of the 20th Century, including the Carte du Ciel, will appreciate Eva Isaksson’s “Not a Heavenly View." The title is telling.)

The Bus makes a stop at Carte du Ciel because, after working several weeks with charts created by just one of the participating institutions (the Observatoire de Bordeaux), I’m reminded of two axioms relevant to the extraterrestrial life debate and the search for life beyond Earth:

Science is usually incremental in approach and accomplishment.

Sustained efforts often produce unexpected results over time.

Over the course of the project’s lifetime, Carte du Ciel observatories recorded the relative positions of more than four million stars. This was a monumental accomplishment despite the errors that were sometimes made. But the effort also created a record against which star positions obtained through modern, more sophisticated techniques could be compared. And this enabled astronomers to more accurately determine the motions of the stars.

I suspect the dedicated women and men who spent years – and also careers – making all those images and charts had no idea their painstaking work would contribute in this way.

October 25, 2008

On Thursday of this past week, 31 people, including myself, enjoyed a real treat in Chicago’s Loop: a free public lunchtime lecture by Dr. Marvin Bolt, Director of the Webster Institute for the History of Astronomy at the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum. Bolt’s topic was “Theology and Extraterrestrials: Reflections on Life in the Universe,” the first of three lectures in a series on extraterrestrial life co-sponsored by the Adler and The Chicago Temple, also known as the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple.

Among other things, the Temple has the distinction of being the oldest church in the city (it was organized in 1831).

The Adler was the first planetarium built in the United States (est. 1930) and it contains the Western Hemisphere’s largest collection of historic astronomical instruments.

In addition to many other accomplishments, Marvin Bolt is one of the world’s leading authorities on early telescopes. He’s also an historian of science with a keen interest in the ways that religious belief systems intersect the idea of life beyond Earth.

One of the remarkable things about the occasion was the co-sponsorship arrangement between these two highly visible Chicago institutions – one scientific with a focus on educating and encouraging young people, particularly women and minorities, to enter careers in science, and the other religious with a focus on spiritual education and building a community grounded in faith while “committed to a transforming tradition connected with what’s going on in the world.”

I value this kind of partnership because I understand how comparatively rare it is today. For about 150 years, Westerners have tended to separate the religious and the secular, matters of faith and science. This wasn’t always the case, of course, but that’s a subject for a different post.

Another remarkable aspect of the program was the topic itself. I’ve been interested in the impacts of discovering life off our planet for a long time, but I never imagined having an opportunity to hear a presentation on the theological dimension of the extraterrestrial life debate right in my own back yard.

Not only did I enjoy learning new information through Bolt’s talk, I gained fresh perspectives on some of the fundamental questions raised within Christianity by a surprisingly broad collection of astronomers, philosophers, theologians, and literary figures who thought and wrote about the idea of beings living on various worlds beyond Earth. (Examples of these questions were provided by Bolt: Did God create more than one world with living beings? If so, are they intelligent? If so, did they fall into sin? If so, how does redemption take place? Is there a unique incarnation? A Jesus for each world? Or is there one Jesus for the entire universe?, etc.)

My new perspectives include an even deeper appreciation for the depth and breadth of the plurality of worlds debate as it has played out so far, and a clearer recognition of the importance of searching for similarly fundamental questions concerning the prospect of life beyond Earth that that have been raised in other religious traditions and contexts.

Not bad for a Thursday afternoon.

The ability to make connections between apparently different ideas or even objects is at the heart of creative inquiry. Understandably, it often leads to surprising results. We know this from our own personal experience but it’s often easier to recognize when we observe the process in others. Or read about it happening to others.

This short articleis a “connect the dots” case in point involving Bolt, a colleague, and visits to several German museums that took place a couple of years ago. The piece speaks for itself, and what the historian of science says about his subject at the end of the article is worth re-reading several times:

“If we understand that today, too, science has economic, legal, political, artistic and religious dimensions, then we can do science in an integrated, ethical way.”

Coming next:The largest international science project you probably never heard of

October 22, 2008

Welcome to Cosmology Bus, a new ride for readers interested in any number of Big Questions for which definitive answers are currently in short supply: Are we alone in the Universe? Does it matter if we are? Does it matter if we aren't? What are the cultural and spiritual implications of discovering (or continuing not to discover) life beyond Earth? Are science and religion mutually exclusive? Are their purposes contrary or complementary? What do belief systems have to say about life in the Cosmos? Why spend money on NASA science missions when we're apparently knee-deep in an economic recession? Why do forget so much of our history so often? Can we all get along?

There is no shortage of Big Questions.

Cosmology Bus is one way of touring the landscape in search of answers. And it’s an appropriate vehicle for me: currently my day job really is driving a school bus in a very pretty part of northern Illinois.

When I'm not driving for the local school district I'm researching, and increasingly writing, about topics I've been interested in for years but never the time to explore as fully as I can today. Subjects that are part of my past but came into sharper focus only when I managed a publishing house producing books on the Baha'i Faith and its relationship to other world religions and the spiritual dimension of human life: new ways of thinking about science and religion, the nature of the Universe, our place within it, and how exploring all three can be a fulfilling endeavor.

Long before I managed the publishing house I was a graduate student in anthropology, which provided other useful perspectives in looking at my world and also at the heavens above on clear nights. Little did I know back then that what I was learning about ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and the anthropology of religion would assist me decades later when researching the long and fascinating history of the extraterrestrial life debate extraterrestrial life debate, the rise of new atheism, perceived distinctions between spiritual and religious beliefs, or the non-dogmatic reality of religion in American society today.

This is a journey I will most enjoy making with others, and especially with others from a wide variety of backgrounds, life experiences, and interests. There are seats here for amateurs and professionals, practitioners and theorists, seekers, believers, atheists, and agnostics.

I hope you enjoy the ride!

Coming next: What a Planetarium, a Temple, and Extraterrestrials Have in Common